Chapter 8: In Rum We Trust. By the time of the Salem witch trials, the primary god of New England was Mammon. Most of the colonists had prospered materially, and their lives were wrapped up in making money. That in itself was bad enough, but the various ways so many of them made their fortunes was particularly evil: trafficking in human beings. During the colonial period, what geographic section of the country do you suppose took the lead in slave trafficking? The Deep South?
That would have been my guess at one time. But no, the geographic sector that led slave trafficking was New England. Just 14 years after the founding of Boston, an association of Puritan traders commissioned three ships to sail to Africa in quest of black slaves and gold. However, when the New England ships reached the west coast of Africa, they were forced out by the Dutch and British slave traders, who didn't want any further competition. But this didn't deter the ambitious New England ship captains.
They simply sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and began trafficking slaves from Madagascar, on the opposite side of Africa. But a few decades later, things changed. The British eventually gained the upper hand over the Dutch and forced them out of the West African slave trade. Next, in 1667, Parliament revoked the slave trafficking monopoly previously given to the British Royal African Company.
This left the door wide open for New England traders to share in slave trafficking, and they immediately pounced on the opportunity. The New England merchants developed a triangular commercial system that became known as the Golden Triangle. The Triangle of Evil would be a better name for it. The Golden Triangle. Here's how the Golden Triangle worked. It began with molasses imported into New England from the Caribbean. New England operators distilled the molasses into rum. Boston had its first distillery in 1667.
That distillery was a huge success, and before long, manufacturing rum became New England's largest and most prosperous industry. Almost every important town in Massachusetts and throughout New England had at least one rum distillery. I find that most conservative Christians are surprised to learn that the Puritans and their Congregationalist descendants approved of drinking alcoholic beverages in moderation. But they did, as did most other Christian churches at the time.
The Congregationalist minister, Increase Mather, once stated in a sermon, "Drink is in itself a good creature of God and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan. The wine is from God, but the drunkard is from the devil." Nathan Strong, a Congregationalist pastor in Hartford, Connecticut, actually owned a distillery. Puritan thriftiness enabled the colonists to make rum cheaply. The cost to produce a gallon of rum was as low as five and a half pennies.
During the colonial period, New England churned out millions of gallons of inexpensive rum. By 1774, Massachusetts boasted 63 distilleries, which produced 2.7 million gallons of rum a year. Even tiny Rhode Island had more than 30 distilleries. Some of this rum was for local consumption, as rum was prevalent everywhere in lumber camps, local taverns, and on fishing ships. Later, during the Revolutionary War, rum was considered a staple for the men in the Continental Army. Trading Rum for Slaves.
In truth, most of the colonists preferred to drink superior rum made in the West Indies rather than the local rum. So most New England rum was shipped to Africa. This was the first leg of the Golden Triangle. In Africa, the rum was traded for slaves. As could be expected, the millions of gallons of rum that the New Englanders brought to Africa contributed to severe alcoholism throughout that continent.
The next leg of the triangle was transporting the African slaves to the West Indies to work in the sugar plantations. This second leg was often referred to as the Middle Passage. A slave that had cost the merchant only five to ten pounds sterling could be sold in the West Indies for a price between 30 and 80 British pounds. To be sure, it wasn't inexpensive to hire a ship and finance such a long ocean voyage. But few enterprises in human history have been so profitable.
With fortunes to be made, it was not difficult for the New England colonists and churches to close their eyes to the wickedness of what they were doing. A person might suppose that with such a huge profit margin, the slave merchants at least would have attempted to transport the slaves as humanely as possible. But no, the thrifty New Englanders wanted to squeeze every last penny they could out of their slave business.
So they packed their human cargo as densely as possible, like spoons in a multi-tiered silverware case. They allowed only three feet three inches of vertical space per deck, and they gave each slave only 13 inches of surface width. A slave ship's surgeon, Dr. Falconbridge, gave this description of what he saw during his time of service there. The hardships and inconveniences suffered by the Negroes during the passage are scarcely to be enumerated or conceived.
They are far more violently affected by seasickness than the Europeans. It frequently terminates in death, especially among the women. The exclusion of fresh air is among the most intolerable. Most ships have portholes for air, but whenever the sea is rough and the rain heavy, it becomes necessary to shut these and every other conveyance by which air is admitted. The fresh air being thus excluded, the Negroes' quarters very soon grow intolerably hot.
The confined air, rendered noxious by the smell exhaled from their bodies and by being repeatedly breathed, soon produces fevers and diarrhea, which generally cause death to great numbers of them. During the voyages I made, I was frequently a witness to the fatal effects of this exclusion of fresh air. I will give one instance, as it serves to convey some idea, though a very faint one, of the state of these unhappy beings.
Some wet and blowing weather having occasioned the portholes to be shut and the gratings to be covered, diarrhea and fevers among the Negroes ensued. My profession requiring it, I frequently went down among them till at length their compartments became so extremely hot as to be only sufferable for a very short time. But the excessive heat was not the only thing that rendered their situation intolerable.
The deck, that is, the floor of their quarters, was so covered with blood and excrement, which had proceeded from them in consequence of the diarrhea, that it resembled a slaughterhouse. It is not in the power of human imagination to picture a situation more dreadful or more disgusting. The entire experience was so dehumanizing, terrifying, and horrible that many of the slaves preferred death. Yet for most of them, the only way to commit suicide was to refuse to eat.
But the merchants lost money for every slave who died en route, so they used inhuman methods to force the slaves to eat. Dr. Falconbridge describes some of the methods used. Upon the Negroes refusing to take sustenance, I have seen coals of fire, glowing hot, put on a shovel and placed so near their lips as to scorch and burn them. And this has been accompanied with threats of forcing them to swallow the coals if they any longer persisted in refusing to eat. These means have generally produced the desired effect.
I have also been credibly informed that a certain captain in the slave trade poured melted lead on such of the Negroes as obstinately refused their food. One would think that only men who believed there was no God could possibly be involved in such a cruel, inhumane enterprise. Yet the ship's log of one slave trader is wretchedly revealing. During the Middle Passage, the ship was becalmed for 18 days, and drinking water was running low. Finally, the wind returned, and the ship made it to the West Indies.
With gratitude, the captain wrote in his log, "The Almighty God never suffereth his elect to perish." What was the final leg of this triangle? After selling their slaves in the West Indies, the New England traders then filled their ships with barrels of molasses. They transported this molasses to New England to sell to the rum distillers, and then the triangle of evil would start all over again. The Pervasiveness of the Slave Industry.
By the eve of the American Revolution, the rum and slave industries were at the heart of the New England economy. Slave ships provided direct work for coopers, tanners, sailmakers, sailors, carpenters, dockworkers, and ropemakers. Indirectly, they provided work for lumbermen and shipbuilders, as well as for the rum distillers and their laborers. Both slave and rum merchants also employed countless agents, insurers, lawyers, and clerks to handle their paperwork and accounting.
Colonial newspapers drew income from advertisements of slaves for sale or hire, and from help-wanted advertisements for sailors to man the slave ships. But the profits from the rum and slave industries didn't stop there. The people who prospered from the rum and slave industries employed carpenters, masons, and other construction workers to build comfortable homes for themselves and their families. These industries enabled many a family to employ household servants and gardeners.
Wives of rum distillers and slave merchants had money to spend on fancy dresses, pewter, and silver goods made by New England craftsmen or imported from England. The Golden Triangle spread wealth throughout every tier of New England society, but it was one of the most wicked enterprises ever devised by man. Yet it was not the only evil triangle.